The New York Times, March 11, 2020 (with Jonathan Corum)
Things have certainly changed since the last Friday’s Elk. The world has experienced over 100,000 infections of Covid-19, caused by a virus, SARS-CoV-2, that we didn’t even know about till a few weeks ago.
At first, we Americans complacently looked at the news as just another overseas disaster. As of this afternoon, there are 370 confirmed cases in the United States (one just a thirty-minute drive from where I live in Connecticut). Because our testing program is a mess, it’s certain there are many more–and transmission will bring more in weeks to come. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, March 7, 2020”
The Atlantic, March 2, 2020
On the morning of March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb went off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. John Clark was only 20 miles away when he issued the order, huddled with his crew inside a windowless concrete blockhouse on Bikini Atoll. But seconds went by, and all was silent. He wondered if the bomb had failed. Eventually, he radioed a Navy ship monitoring the test explosion.
“It’s a good one,” they told him.
Continue reading “Nuclear Tests Marked Life on Earth With a Radioactive Spike”
The New York Times, February 12, 2020
Scientists reported on Wednesday that they had discovered evidence of an extinct branch of humans whose ancestors split from our own a million years ago. The evidence of these humans was not a fossil. Instead, the researchers found pieces of their DNA in the genomes of living people from West Africa.
Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman, two geneticists at the University of California, Los Angeles, described this so-called ghost archaic population in the journal Science Advances. Their discovery may shed light on human genetic diversity in Africa, which has been hard to chart until now because the fossil record is sparse.
Continue reading “Ghost DNA Hints at Africa’s Missing Ancient Humans”
Happy Groundhog Day’s Eve!
I wanted to start off with a note to Friday’s Elk readers in the Los Angeles area. On Thursday, February 6, I will be speaking in the Aloud Series at the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. I’ll be in conversation with Sean Carroll, Caltech physicist, author, and podcaster extraordinaire. We’ll be at the Mark Taper Auditorium-Central Library. Hope to see you! You can register here.
This past month, I took a look at evolution’s imprint on us, as well as a great step that took place two billion years ago to our level of complexity. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, February 1, 2020”